The Painstaking Work of Brush Making

Image

At the Chikuhodo workshop in Kumano, Japan, unwanted hairs are removed from a brush with a traditional tool called a hanzashi.CreditCreditJost Fink

By Kelly Wetherille

April 23, 2013

KUMANO, JAPAN — In a small two-story workshop in the Japanese prefecture of Hiroshima, the master brush maker Tesshu Takemori leads a team of artisans in making some of the highest-quality makeup brushes in the world, and almost everything is done by hand.

Mr. Takemori grew up in Kumano, about 13 kilometers, or 8 miles, from the city of Hiroshima. It has a long history of brush making, originating in the early 19th century with Japanese calligraphy brushes. Today, the town of 26,000 is responsible for 80 percent of all brushes manufactured in Japan, including calligraphy brushes, paintbrushes and makeup brushes.

“I started getting involved in brush making from about the age of 18 because my parents did it,” producing calligraphy brushes, said Mr. Takemori, 81. “It used to be done in the home by families, so all across Kumano there were people who did each step.”

In the 1960s, he started producing makeup brushes, responding to a growing demand from Japan and the United States, and a few years later stopped making calligraphy brushes to focus entirely on cosmetic brushes. He also moved production out of the family home and into a workshop in 1971 with the establishment of his company, called Chikuhodo.

But Mr. Takemori does not have to travel far to work. When he established his workshop, he also built a new home adjacent, where he still lives with two other generations of his family.

Each weekday morning and two Saturdays a month, Mr. Takemori crosses over to the workshop, sits down alongside his employees — women in pink smocks and men in blue work jackets — and carefully handcrafts a variety of brushes from natural and synthetic hairs.

Today, his company employs 100 people and makes 4,000 to 5,000 brushes a day for clients like the Japanese cosmetics companies Shiseido, RMK and Kose. Kanebo, also based in Japan, has even worked with Chikuhodo to develop a special line of luxury brushes bearing Mr. Takemori’s first name.

Chikuhodo’s prices range from about ¥1,890, or $19, for a small lipstick brush to ¥15,750 for a powder brush of squirrel hair. There also is a top-end set of nine brushes in a cylindrical pouch for ¥157,500.

At the company, only the beginning steps of the brush making process are done by machine.

First, in a small annex next to the main atelier, hairs from different batches are placed on a small conveyor belt and run through a compacting machine about 10 times to achieve an even mix with a uniform color and texture. While such processing is particularly important for brushes with two or more types of hair, Mr. Takemori says it is a step that cannot be skipped even for brushes of a single hair type. “Because they’re natural, no hairs are ever alike,” Mr. Takemori explained. “So we mix them to achieve an even texture.”

Once mixed, the hairs are again divided into small batches and placed on another machine that basically consists of a vibrating metal plate. Its motion straightens the hairs and ensures the tips are evenly positioned.

Next, in a step that sets Japanese brushes apart from those made in other countries, highly skilled workers use a traditional tool called a hanzashi to remove unwanted hairs, including ones that are facing the wrong direction or those that somehow have been cut in nature, giving them a blunt end. It can take five or six years for an artisan to master the hanzashi, which includes being able to feel which hairs should be removed simply by running a finger over the tips. At Chikuhodo, only three artisans in addition to Mr. Takemori are trained to use the hanzashi.

“All the brush makers who have been doing this for a long time have hanzashi,” Mr. Takemori said. “But according to the news around Kumano, many people don’t use them anymore. The reason for this is that, if the artisan doesn’t have very sensitive fingers, it can be dangerous to use.”

Mr. Takemori holds the hanzashi in his right hand, between his thumb and middle finger, and deftly maneuvers it along the hairs toward their tips, removing bad hairs between the blade of the tool and his forefinger. He says the number of hairs removed from any one bunch varies, but he estimates it to be around 20 percent. Once removed, the hairs are discarded and not used again.

Once the artisan has only hairs with soft, natural tips, it is time to shape the brush head. Mr. Takemori points out boxes and boxes of variously sized wooden cylinders, call koma, that are used as molds for the base of the brush head. He holds one in his left hand and, with his right, places the hairs inside the cylinder using a smooth twisting motion.

“We develop the shape and size of the brush heads together with the cosmetic companies, then make the cylinders here,” Mr. Takemori said. “By molding the hairs to a particular shape in this way, we avoid having to cut their natural ends, which makes the brush feel much softer against the skin.”

Once the hairs are set, Mr. Takemori binds them with wire, removes the koma, then takes the brush head and gently rolls it between his hands. With each movement the shape changes, becoming more elongated and tapered.

Mr. Takemori is mindful of each shift, both watching and feeling the changes to avoid altering the brush’s shape too much. The manipulation ultimately determines the quality of the finished brush, so it is a step that requires both intuition and attention to detail.

Once the desired shape has been achieved, a metal shaft is pressed onto the base, which becomes a decorative element between the brush head and the handle. Then the brush head is manipulated one last time, perfecting the final shape before the bases of the hairs are glued into place.

Mr. Takemori again takes up the hanzashi and removes any hairs missed by the glue. Finally, the handle is attached, and the brush is cleaned and inspected before being packaged for the client.

While Mr. Takemori can make a brush from start to finish, the work generally is done by a series of artisans in a sort of assembly line.

“It would take too long to learn the entire process,” Mr. Takemori said. “So we have people who measure the hairs, people who cull the bad hairs, people who tie the hairs together; it takes six people just to get to a tied bunch of hairs. In total, each brush probably passes through the hands of about 10 or 12 people.”

At Chikuhodo, the artisans specialize, but they also learn the skills needed for the work around their own. “If we don’t understand the steps before and after our own task, we can’t understand why we do what we do,” said Mr. Takemori’s grandson Yutaro, who began working at Chikuhodo a year ago after returning from studying English in Canada. (With Yutaro in the atelier, Mr. Takemori says he believes the company is the only one in Kumano to have three generations of the same family on staff.)

Mr. Takemori’s son Shin serves as president and mainly oversees the business side of things. While he understands the brush-making process and often works alongside the rest of the staff members on the workshop floor, he has not followed in his father’s footsteps to become a master brush maker.

“Tesshu’s style of training is watching and learning, so he doesn’t directly train people so much. But there is one other person that my grandfather is training very closely,” Yutaro said. “But Tesshu says that he is still young, and he too is still learning.”

“The most important thing about brush making is being able to think for yourself; otherwise you can’t understand how to make new brushes,” Mr. Takemori said. “You also have to understand the characteristics of different types of hair, and that is something that I am always continuing to learn about.”